Monday, January 4, 2010

New Years in Las Vegas

All December long, I searched for cheap tickets to Las Vegas for New Years. The cheapest I was able to find were around $600! That's a lot when it usually costs around $200-$300. The night before I was supposed to go, I let Shawn know that I was not going to be able to make it. He said to keep checking, but this was the night before I was supposed to leave. After I hung up with him, I decided to check one more time, there was a flight on airtran.com for $415! I hurried up and booked it ASAP. I called Shawn back and said "I'm coming to Vegas!" This was somewhere around 9PM, the flight was for 7:30AM the next day! I had to get packing. I also had to buy a ticket to Eve The Night Club for New Years. I bought my tickets though snaptickets.com where Shawn and Kara got theirs. I packed and was ready but was not able to fall asleep until 2 with all that excitement.

I woke up the next day and went to the airport early. I had a short stop in Milwaukee and then was in Las Vegas. I had the whole day to myself since Shawn and Kara were working. I spent the day walking around the strip and tried to get my tickets at Eve, but no online tickets were available yet. Shawn and Kara picked me up at Crystals and we hung out at their place for a while before we had to go back to the airport to pickup her sister and her sister's friend. We did not go out that night since Shawn had to work in the morning, but that was okay, I wanted to be rested up for New Years Eve.

The next day, I went to the strip with Kayla and Jess. We tried to get our tickets pretty much all day but they were still not available! It was getting to be pretty ridiculous. We wasted our whole day trying to get our tickets. We had to get ready so we went to the hotel (Casino Royal) to get ready and meet up with Shawn and Kara. We got ready and were back at Eve an hour before it opened. They were still giving us a hard time about getting our tickets! Finally Shawn called the club and someone came out to give us our tickets. They have a really terrible process for handling tickets. When we finally made it inside, we had free drinks until 11. It was pretty easy to get the drinks which was surprising to us. We hung out with a Scottish couple that night that we met multiple times that day when we were trying to get our tickets. The club was okay but not worth the money we spent to go there. Shawn and I were starting to get tired of the place and we would rather just leave and watch the fireworks. We went outside to watch them being shot off the roofs of MGM and Aria. On our way back to the hotel, we walked directly on Las Vegas Boulevard! The whole road was closed down. It was pretty unbelievable. There were thousands of people everywhere. At some points, I did not even have to walk, I just sorta
"flowed" with the crowd.

The next day we hung out on the strip for a couple hours before we went back to Shawn's place to watch the Rose Bowl. After that, we went Downtown and had dinner and then went to Stratosphere. We went up to the top and I was the only one who would ride the rides up there. I rode Insanity it was really fun but made me extremely cold! It was early, but at that point the girls who walked around all day were getting tired so we went home.

The next day, we went to Green Valley Ranch by Shawn's house in Henderson before we had to bring the girls back to the airport. That place was nicer than I though it would be. After we dropped them off, we headed home and rested before going out on last time. We went downtown again, played some roulette and a couple slots. After we went back to Green Valley Ranch where I won $166 on a slot! I never win and was pretty excited about it.

Yesterday I left Vegas and my plane had to slow down on the way to Milwaukee. When I got here the plane to Pittsburgh was already gone so I had to spend the night. I'm at the airport now waiting for my flight back at 9:55. Wish I was still in Vegas.